For nearly two decades, Television: Critical Methods and Applications has served as the foremost guide to television studies. Designed for the television studies course in communication and media studies curricula, Television explains in depth how television programs and commercials are made and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the ways in which camera style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that viewers take away from their television experience. He supplies students with a whole toolbox of implements to disassemble television and read between the lines, teaching them to incorporate critical thinking into their own television viewing. The fourth edition builds upon the pedagogy of previous editions to best accommodate current modes of understanding and teaching television. Highlights of the fourth edition include: New chapter and part organization to reflect the current approach to teaching television—with greatly expanded methods and theories chapters. An entirely new chapter on modes of production and their impact on what you see on the screen. Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in television’s on-going convergence with other media, such as material on transmedia storytelling and YouTube’s impact on video distribution. Over three hundred printed illustrations, including new and better quality frame grabs of recent television shows and commercials. A companion website featuring color frame grabs, a glossary, flash cards, and editing and sound exercises for students, as well as PowerPoint presentations, sample syllabi and other materials for instructors. Links to online videos that support examples in the text are also provided. With its distinctive approach to examining television, Television is appropriate for courses in television studies, media criticism, and general critical studies.

This is a complete revision of the author's 1993 McFarland book Television Specials that not only updates entries contained within that edition, but adds numerous programs not previously covered, including beauty pageants, parades, awards programs, Broadway and opera adaptations, musicals produced especially for television, holiday specials (e.g., Christmas and New Year's Eve), the early 1936-1947 experimental specials, honors specials. In short, this is a reference work to 5,336 programs--the most complete source for television specials ever published.

Collection of essays that consider television as a digital media form and the aesthetic, cultural, and industrial changes that this shift has provoked.

The Encyclopedia of Television, second edtion is the first major reference work to provide description, history, analysis, and information on more than 1100 subjects related to television in its international context. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclo pedia of Television, 2nd edition website.

Orianthi is a musical force of nature. Single-minded and driven, she began playing guitar as a young child with one simple goal: to be the best. Considered a child prodigy in her native Australia, by the time she reached her mid-teens, Orianthi was performing with some of the music industry’s most respected musicians, including Carlos Santana. Her jaw-dropping guitar-playing skills brought Orianthi to the United States, where she became an overnight sensation after performing with Carrie Underwood at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Since then her life has been a nonstop whirlwind of travel and music. With the release of her CD Believe and its hit single “According to You,” Orianthi is the music industry’s latest phenomenon. Her inspiring story of daring to be different to make her dreams come true proves that anything is possible if you just believe.

Megan Fox is the poster child for empowered women: she’s part glamour girl and part action-adventure heroine. Outspoken and controversial, Fox has a disarming sense of humor about herself and is the first to admit she has yet to prove herself a serious actress. Despite her movie star looks, life wasn’t always easy for Fox. Born and raised in a very strict Tennessee family, Fox was bullied so badly in school she started eating her lunch while hiding in a bathroom stall. Being an outcast in school prompted her to put all her energies into performing. She appeared in her first movie at sixteen and never looked back. Within five years she was starring opposite Shia LaBeouf in Transformers, the movie that made her a star and one of the most photographed women in the world. This book recounts her journey from the hills of Tennessee to international fame and reveals the girl-next-door side of Fox rarely seen.